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Looking for some new debt? Buy Rwandan! The African country will price $400 million in 10-year bonds on the open markets today. Investors believe that it could yield less than 7%, a level Spanish bond yields surpassed last year.

More Brazilians out of work. March unemployment data comes out today; the level has been slowly rising for the past few months, hitting 5.6% in February. But even in Brazil’s sluggish economy that’s still enough low to push up inflation.

Another big day for earnings: Exxon, Dow Chemical, Gazprom, UPS, Baidu, and Amazon all report today.

While you were sleeping

Could it be? Britain avoided a triple-dip recession. The headline figure was 0.3% growth quarter-on-quarter, comfortably beating forecasts of 0.1% growth, and a robust (for Britain) 0.6% on the same period last year, the country’s strongest showing since the end of 2011.

Unemployment in Spain hit a new high. The number of people out of work rose to 6.2 million in the first three months of the year, for a staggering unemployment rate of 27.2%. Figures from France later today are expected to be similarly dire.

A bit of a comeback for South Korea. First quarter GDP was up 0.9% on the previous three months and a solid 1.5% on the same period last year, a two-year high that exceeded expectations and surprised the central bank.

Beer lost its fizz. Revenues for the first quarter rose 8% at Heineken to €4.1 billion ($5.4 billion) but fell below consensus as Europeans and Nigerians drank less beer.

Todd Woody on how California’s dream to be the Saudi Arabia of solar is drying up in the desert. “So why are big solar thermal projects in the desert fizzling, while installations of rooftop photovoltaic panels in cities and suburbs continue to set records? It’s all about money, technology and location, location, location.” Read more here.

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